You get the feeling that they heard the 'ehhh ...' response to the solo play, and decided they should cook up a video showing the frenetic and more colorful activity of party combat instead.

Leves look simple enough, like they did in 1.0. I like that you can initiate them where the activity would begin, as well as apparently alter the difficulty away from an encampment. The music is also much more fitting and enjoyable for what is going on compared to 1.0's, but I've been on record numerous times as saying "FFXIV + Less Uematsu = Thumbs Up".

I still think the spell and ability effects need to be toned down a little. To me it's more distracting and kind of annoying to see these huge explosions when all the character is doing is stabbing some poor creature. Not sure what to think about levequests still being in, maybe I assumed that traditional MMO quests would be the leveling route this time, save time on development maybe? Import a great deal of 1.0 levequests and add about 1/4 traditional quests?

It's safe to say that we won't see much of what a longer, more involved battle will be because of the 20 cap and limited jobs in alpha. I just hope that there is more to it than standing in place and spamming like you said.

Combat remains largely unchanged and I think this will be the biggest barrier to me getting started in ARR. It looks amazing, but it doesn't look fun.

____________________________

Rinsui wrote:

Only hips + boobs all day and hips + boobs all over my icecream

HaibaneRenmei wrote:

30 bucks is almost free

cocodojo wrote:

Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.

Party combat looks kinda boring to me. Everybody spams their spells and thats it!? I know you also did this in XI, but it "felt" different. Guess I've to play the beta or the final product.

I'm afraid i have to agree. I know they keep saying "but the combat system isn't finished yet!", and "but wait for Limit Breaks!". Well Limit Breaks better be some game changing sh*t is all i have to say, because that crap was tough to watch.

Having said that, I also think this is yet another case of SE just not understanding what good PR video is. They seem to think that releasing proof of concept videos is good for business. It really isn't. I don't care if the combat "works", because I expect it to work. It's supposed to work. No cookies for that. I want to see that it is awesome. If the combat system is unfinished, then I'd rather they at least wait until beta and release a boss fight video or something that shows us some strategic group play.

Then again, I never really expected the combat to be awesome. As soon as they said they were removing positional requirements for combos I started lowering my expectations. It would be nice if we could at least still "dodge" certain TP moves by getting out of range, but I have a feeling that won't be around anymore either.

The mobs' spasms are definitely annoying, they really don't feel epic when it looks like that. Combat does look boring so yeah I sure hope there is something more on the horizon that is yet to be implemented.

About the effects I can agree about them being a bit too flashy sometimes, sort of like what Rinsui wrote... too much of the booms makes it less "boomy". However to me this doesn't seem to apply to the spell effects, job abilities yes, but the spells seem lackluster as ever.

I wish I had gotten more excited tbh, but then again a lot of games look rather boring until you try it yourself.

Both charming and humorous/sad how much it hearkens back to the old FF days of your party standing in a straight line adjacent your enemy. Except at least in those days your characters actually took a step toward the monster from time to time :P

On the plus side there's potential for more interesting gameplay than what we're seeing. Global cooldown's aren't inherently bad if the pacing is ok and the choices are actually interesting. It does seem that there's a lot of "spam A" battle going on here, though. If they can find a way to make those decisions really matter, it could be strategic if not high-action. Of course I'm not actually optimistic.

Developers are afraid to break from "boring" because boring has been selling pretty well. In this kind of game, it's almost impossible to make things boring without making them more complicated, and god forbid endgame play should be more complicated than you can understand from watching a three minute trailer.

Never confuse your inference as the listener for an implication of the speaker.

Good games are subjective like good food is subjective. You're not going to seriously tell me that there's not a psychological basis for why pizza is great and lutefisk is revolting. The thing about subjectivity is that, as subjects go, humans actually have a great deal in common.

I'm reserving my opinion. It looks like the scope of Alpha is just too limited to get an idea of how group-based party mechanics will flesh out, apart from the big picture overview of 1.0 differences.

We see, what, three classes in that video? It looks like a caster, archer and looks like a lancer. And all of them appear to be capped to 20. Abilities used were nothing more than simple 'click and do damage' based ones it seems. Aside from the cures, there was no group-based abilities or effects present, if there were I couldn't distinguish them from the light show spam.

Of course combat at this release stage and level is going to be simplistic - it's an alpha of limited scope. Honestly, 1.0 lowered my expectations so much regarding a FF MMORPG, I'm just happy there's no 1.5 to 2 second delay upon clicking an ability.

I just hope I don't have to come back later and eat my words, when group combat at level 30, 40 and 50 with jobs and other classes mixed in is just as unintuitive and boring.

I'm sorry guys but the game looks too easy for my taste, it gives you the location of where to go, difficulty settings.

This has been in the game since day one 1.0. You can only rachet the difficulty up, not down from your current level (notice the +1 through +4 options). In 1.0 you did it if you wanted to have a group doing Leves and make the XP from the mob kills higher. If you want to solo, you drop it down. In his case he's doing a level 15 leve on a level 20 character. I assume he dropped the difficulty to make the kills faster for the video. Leves were always meant as a form of earning XP and income, not a quest.

I'm afraid i have to agree. I know they keep saying "but the combat system isn't finished yet!", and "but wait for Limit Breaks!". Well Limit Breaks better be some game changing sh*t is all i have to say, ... As soon as they said they were removing positional requirements for combos I started lowering my expectations. It would be nice if we could at least still "dodge" certain TP moves by getting out of range, but I have a feeling that won't be around anymore either.

Kachi wrote:

Both charming and humorous/sad how much it hearkens back to the old FF days of your party standing in a straight line adjacent your enemy. Except at least in those days your characters actually took a step toward the monster from time to time :P

On the plus side there's potential for more interesting gameplay than what we're seeing. Global cooldown's aren't inherently bad if the pacing is ok and the choices are actually interesting. It does seem that there's a lot of "spam A" battle going on here, though. If they can find a way to make those decisions really matter, it could be strategic if not high-action. Of course I'm not actually optimistic.

Developers are afraid to break from "boring" because boring has been selling pretty well. In this kind of game, it's almost impossible to make things boring without making them more complicated, and god forbid endgame play should be more complicated than you can understand from watching a three minute trailer.

This is exactly why people have been begging SE not to make the game "casual". Because oftentimes, casual means easy-mode. Having things like positional requirements, teamwork, or strategies that require actual strategy have a tendency to elicit complaints from a sizable portion of the "casual crowd". These casuals basically want to set up autoattack, occasionally click a button, and watch a movie of their character making things explode. And then collect their uber1337 gear that drops at the end of the movie. As I've said before, everyone want to be a rock star, but few people actually want to learn how to play the guitar...

Edited, Dec 20th 2012 10:42am by ChaChaJaJa

____________________________

BlueLand wrote:

You can always take a screen shot of the 1017 error and set it to your desktop background, its like playing FFXIV from work

I'm afraid i have to agree. I know they keep saying "but the combat system isn't finished yet!", and "but wait for Limit Breaks!". Well Limit Breaks better be some game changing sh*t is all i have to say, ... As soon as they said they were removing positional requirements for combos I started lowering my expectations. It would be nice if we could at least still "dodge" certain TP moves by getting out of range, but I have a feeling that won't be around anymore either.

Kachi wrote:

Both charming and humorous/sad how much it hearkens back to the old FF days of your party standing in a straight line adjacent your enemy. Except at least in those days your characters actually took a step toward the monster from time to time :P

On the plus side there's potential for more interesting gameplay than what we're seeing. Global cooldown's aren't inherently bad if the pacing is ok and the choices are actually interesting. It does seem that there's a lot of "spam A" battle going on here, though. If they can find a way to make those decisions really matter, it could be strategic if not high-action. Of course I'm not actually optimistic.

Developers are afraid to break from "boring" because boring has been selling pretty well. In this kind of game, it's almost impossible to make things boring without making them more complicated, and god forbid endgame play should be more complicated than you can understand from watching a three minute trailer.

This is exactly why people have been begging SE not to make the game "casual". Because oftentimes, casual means easy-mode. Having things like positional requirements, teamwork, or strategies that require actual strategy have a tendency to elicit complaints from a sizable portion of the "casual crowd". These casuals basically want to set up autoattack, occasionally click a button, and watch a movie of their character making things explode. And then collect their uber1337 gear that drops at the end of the movie. As I've said before, everyone want to be a rock star, but few people actually ant to learn how to play the guitar...

Edited, Dec 20th 2012 10:31am by ChaChaJaJa

yet WoW is supposedly the creator of casual MMOs and according to other topics it had hard (thus non boring) fights

I'm sorry guys but the game looks too easy for my taste, it gives you the location of where to go, difficulty settings.

This has been in the game since day one 1.0. You can only rachet the difficulty up, not down from your current level (notice the +1 through +4 options). In 1.0 you did it if you wanted to have a group doing Leves and make the XP from the mob kills higher. If you want to solo, you drop it down. In his case he's doing a level 15 leve on a level 20 character. I assume he dropped the difficulty to make the kills faster for the video. Leves were always meant as a form of earning XP and income, not a quest.

ok Im confused you said the difficulty can only be brought UP not down from your level. thus meaning if Im level 2, the lowest difficulty would be +1 from my level which is level 3.. and +1 was what was shown in the video.

the part you lost me at was he is doing a level 15 quest at level 20. so the lowest difficulty +1 would make it level 21... as such how is it a level 15 quest?

I wouldn't really put a lot of thought into this video. It is alpha and whatever you see here is limited to the first 20 levels and is based on a battle system that is most likely going to change drastically the closer we get to release time. I also didn't see an actual tank in the battle, so I'm guessing he's not hitting as hard as he could be. They are limited to just the 3 jobs. No tank class available yet.

Yeah the adamantoise seizures have got to go. I guess I never noticed that on the smaller mobs they showed in the earlier videos.

On the flipside, the reason combat looked "easy" is cuz the dude doing the leve was fighting mobs 5 levels under him, and if I was reading that video right the big turtle was the same level as the party. (Or maybe it was ten levels higher, it was kind of blurry.) It looks easy-mode because it was easy mode.

____________________________

FFXI: Catwho on Bismarck: Retired December 2014

Thayos wrote:

I can't understand anyone who skips the cutscenes of a Final Fantasy game. That's like going to Texas and not getting barbecue.

Both the adamantoise and the dullahan were lvl 20. The members of the party were all lvl 20 as well I think. I'm guessing these are examples of the new FATE system. They aren't meant to be super hard battles and are just random "events" that will pop up every once in awhile similar to what the random quests or events are like in Guild wars 2.

I'm sorry guys but the game looks too easy for my taste, it gives you the location of where to go, difficulty settings.

This has been in the game since day one 1.0. You can only rachet the difficulty up, not down from your current level (notice the +1 through +4 options). In 1.0 you did it if you wanted to have a group doing Leves and make the XP from the mob kills higher. If you want to solo, you drop it down. In his case he's doing a level 15 leve on a level 20 character. I assume he dropped the difficulty to make the kills faster for the video. Leves were always meant as a form of earning XP and income, not a quest.

ok Im confused you said the difficulty can only be brought UP not down from your level. thus meaning if Im level 2, the lowest difficulty would be +1 from my level which is level 3.. and +1 was what was shown in the video.

the part you lost me at was he is doing a level 15 quest at level 20. so the lowest difficulty +1 would make it level 21... as such how is it a level 15 quest?

The difficulty slider scales to the level of the levequest, not the level of the character. In other words, because the character was level 20, the levequest started him off with a much higher (+4) levequest difficulty because the levequest is normally level 15, meaning the monsters would have been closer to his level (around 19, since 15+4=19).

The tester didn't want fights to take a long time when showing them off, so he reduced the difficulty variable to 0. It's as simple as that.

Additionally, the lowest difficulty is 0, not +1. If you watch the video again, you'd see that.

Yeah, uh, choosing difficulty is a great feature as long as it properly scales rewards. Not sure why anyone would complain about that.

Quote:

This is exactly why people have been begging SE not to make the game "casual". Because oftentimes, casual means easy-mode. Having things like positional requirements, teamwork, or strategies that require actual strategy have a tendency to elicit complaints from a sizable portion of the "casual crowd". These casuals basically want to set up autoattack, occasionally click a button, and watch a movie of their character making things explode. And then collect their uber1337 gear that drops at the end of the movie. As I've said before, everyone want to be a rock star, but few people actually ant to learn how to play the guitar...

Yet to many people, grind-based games are easy-mode. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are people who think they want a game that's casual and easy, but there are lots of challenging casual games and lots of easy hardcore games. I think when most people want a casual game, they simply want a game that they can play with little time commitment and still make meaningful progress. Contrast to games like FFXI in the old days where if you don't have a few hours, don't even bother logging on.

But what I don't think is that anyone actually wants easy-mode games. People get frustrated when things are too hard, sure, but as long as you prepare them for the challenges you give them, it doesn't matter if the game is hard. Most players want to overcome an actual challenge, but if the game isn't genuinely fun, then yeah, they'd rather just meet their goal with no real effort, because their choice is to earn their goal doing something boring, or to abandon their goal altogether, which people do not like to do. But they will, and then they won't set new goals, so they'll quit.

Never confuse your inference as the listener for an implication of the speaker.

Good games are subjective like good food is subjective. You're not going to seriously tell me that there's not a psychological basis for why pizza is great and lutefisk is revolting. The thing about subjectivity is that, as subjects go, humans actually have a great deal in common.

Yet to many people, grind-based games are easy-mode. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are people who think they want a game that's casual and easy, but there are lots of challenging casual games and lots of easy hardcore games. I think when most people want a casual game, they simply want a game that they can play with little time commitment and still make meaningful progress. Contrast to games like FFXI in the old days where if you don't have a few hours, don't even bother logging on.

I hear you. FFXI certainly had that air to it. That's a drawback when progression absolutely requires party play. Double-edged sword. I just don't want to lose the utility of party based progression to quest based easy mode, and if it isn't balanced correctly that's exactly what we will get.

Kachi wrote:

But what I don't think is that anyone actually wants easy-mode games. People get frustrated when things are too hard, sure, but as long as you prepare them for the challenges you give them, it doesn't matter if the game is hard. Most players want to overcome an actual challenge, but if the game isn't genuinely fun, then yeah, they'd rather just meet their goal with no real effort, because their choice is to earn their goal doing something boring, or to abandon their goal altogether, which people do not like to do. But they will, and then they won't set new goals, so they'll quit.

I'm going to use the same examples I always use here. People whined incessantly about CoP because it was too hard. IMO CoP was the high point of FFXI. Sky was also really fun if you could stomach the time-sink aspect and ****** drop rates. But I liked the content and, before everyone was merited out the ***, it was quite challenging. But people also complained about this.

I think a big part of the issue is that, at least in my opinion, it's a lot more interesting when a game involves party play. You have so many more options for adding fun, challenging, and interesting content because there are so many more variables that you can tweak. I'm not talking level progression here, I'm referring to storyline quests etc. When the masses cry about how difficult the content is when it's not really that difficult, it just might take more than one try... then you end up with easy mode content to quell the whining. I guess this is where the variable difficulty selection comes into play. But then people cry if the drops differ from level to level...

I have no idea what the solution is, I'm just saying that it seems like no matter what they do, people whine like spoiled little babies, and you end up with the most vanilla version of content, thereby alienating the people who actually don't mind dying the first time they try a mission.

____________________________

BlueLand wrote:

You can always take a screen shot of the 1017 error and set it to your desktop background, its like playing FFXIV from work

I'm going to use the same examples I always use here. People whined incessantly about CoP because it was too hard. IMO CoP was the high point of FFXI. Sky was also really fun if you could stomach the time-sink aspect and sh*tty drop rates.

CoP/Sky was hard and frustrating. I'm sure I spent many evenings cursing it during my FFXI days. But you know what, it felt **** good and extremely satisfying when you finally got something from it accomplished.

It's partly based in nostalgia, yes, but I haven't felt that level of satisfaction and accomplishment with any modern MMORPG since. I'd like to feel that way again, and I don't care if it's a huge time sink with forced grouping. And I say that as someone who has no where near the same amount of time to play FFXIV as I did FFXI.

Modern MMORPG design of WoW/Rift/GW2 isn't the end-all solution, but neither was the EQ days of past. Still doesn't mean people wouldn't enjoy one over the other every now and then. I hate this forced odds between what MMORPG design should be, I think a modern EQ-type MMORPG would succeed in today's market and would give players a choice in their online RPG experience.

I'm not at all saying that's what FFXIV should be or that it will be unenjoyable regardless, simply an overall picture of what's available out there.

I'm going to use the same examples I always use here. People whined incessantly about CoP because it was too hard. IMO CoP was the high point of FFXI. Sky was also really fun if you could stomach the time-sink aspect and sh*tty drop rates. But I liked the content and, before everyone was merited out the ***, it was quite challenging. But people also complained about this.

I agree: COP was great, probably the funnest thing I ever did in FFXI. So did my entire static. And yeah, lots of people complained, many of them that it was "too hard," but you have to keep in mind that most people don't really stop to think about why they do or don't like games. They just complain about what's on the surface, and designers have to be able to look past that. IMO the crux of what people complained about in COP dealt with party formation. They felt that the content was tuned to be completed with ideal party configurations, and that not using those configurations punished players with loss of XP and gil. And they all but required you to use 2hours, which meant that if you failed, you either had to disband or wait for those 2hours to recharge.

To me, looking at players' actual complaints about content like COP was just more of the same regarding things that XI didn't do well. Timesinks, penalties, poor class balance, etc... You take those things away, and I think the majority of players has no problem with the difficulty level of COP.

Quote:

I think a big part of the issue is that, at least in my opinion, it's a lot more interesting when a game involves party play. You have so many more options for adding fun, challenging, and interesting content because there are so many more variables that you can tweak. I'm not talking level progression here, I'm referring to storyline quests etc. When the masses cry about how difficult the content is when it's not really that difficult, it just might take more than one try... then you end up with easy mode content to quell the whining. I guess this is where the variable difficulty selection comes into play. But then people cry if the drops differ from level to level...

I completely agree, and I hate to see party play as a casualty of casual-ty (god I am just the worst with puns). Most hit games are challenging--they're hard. But they also prepare you to overcome those challenges by giving you the tools you need, and when you fail, they don't make retrying a tremendous barrier. They let you jump right in and prove yourself better than that, rather than giving you the opportunity to kick yourself (or worse, your group) for the next hour or so.

Never confuse your inference as the listener for an implication of the speaker.

Good games are subjective like good food is subjective. You're not going to seriously tell me that there's not a psychological basis for why pizza is great and lutefisk is revolting. The thing about subjectivity is that, as subjects go, humans actually have a great deal in common.

The devs say that the music you hear when the game launches will be different from the video you just posted.

I hope so if only because the synths are pretty horrible even if the themes themselves are pretty good.

Really, as old as FFXI is the synths were clear and worked really well. What I've hear so far is awash in reverb and just generally sounds cluttered as **** and washed out.

I'm still not feeling the 3 second GCD/ability cooldown that I see. It just feels too long and that may change when I actually get a chance to test it out in the game. But right now, just looking, it feels slow no matter how beautiful the animations are.

I'm sorry guys but the game looks too easy for my taste, it gives you the location of where to go, difficulty settings.

This has been in the game since day one 1.0. You can only rachet the difficulty up, not down from your current level (notice the +1 through +4 options). In 1.0 you did it if you wanted to have a group doing Leves and make the XP from the mob kills higher. If you want to solo, you drop it down. In his case he's doing a level 15 leve on a level 20 character. I assume he dropped the difficulty to make the kills faster for the video. Leves were always meant as a form of earning XP and income, not a quest.

ok Im confused you said the difficulty can only be brought UP not down from your level. thus meaning if Im level 2, the lowest difficulty would be +1 from my level which is level 3.. and +1 was what was shown in the video.

the part you lost me at was he is doing a level 15 quest at level 20. so the lowest difficulty +1 would make it level 21... as such how is it a level 15 quest?

It's a recommended level 15 leve because that's the one he accepted. The leves didn't start at your current level, they were grouped by 5's (recommended level 5, 10, 15, etc). Since this is alpha and the cap is 20, I imagine 15 was the highest leve they have implemented so far. So, when he started it, you notice it said recommended level +4 (raising the level to 19 since the player is level 20). They then backed down to the recommended level +0 to kill faster. None of this is any different than 1.0.

No. That's only what people trying to defend their MMO against the Behemoth WoW try to sell you as the truth. WoW most likely is the first (and up to now only) MMO to strike a balance between hardcore and easy by offering content for both. Although, strictly speaking, WoW did not create any MMOs.

Even though you have explained and I do understand the reason to select difficulty, I'm still disappointed because everything looks easy and elementary to me. You know exactly where to go to get the quest done, combat is impressive with graphics but no real skill involved, I'm sorry I'm just stating my opinion. I will still try the game but I already know it won't stick. Because so far from what I have seen the game requires no thinking whatsoever everything is done for you. I never understood why people like casual so much. I don't have much time but I rather play something that requires skill. I guess my hopes for something like XI has died today.

Even though you have explained and I do understand the reason to select difficulty, I'm still disappointed because everything looks easy and elementary to me. You know exactly where to go to get the quest done, combat is impressive with graphics but no real skill involved, I'm sorry I'm just stating my opinion. I will still try the game but I already know it won't stick. Because so far from what I have seen the game requires no thinking whatsoever everything is done for you. I never understood why people like casual so much. I don't have much time but I rather play something that requires skill. I guess my hopes for something like XI has died today.

You act as though this is new to the FFMMO brand. FFXI, for all its backend math, was nothing more than "If you know how to set up Spellcast or macros, you've just optimized your character". FFXIV 1.0 was really horrible in comparison but it actually had a few tactical abilities based on your relative position to the monster.

Frankly, you're looking at FFXI through rose tinted glasses like every other post I've seen that decries "OH WOE IS ME FFXIV IS GONNA GO UBER CASUAL IT LOOKS TOO EASY!!!!" It didn't require this leaps and bounds of "skill" you seem to think it does. Mario requires some skill and dexterity. So does Dark Souls and countless other style games. FFXI just required that you know how the threat system works (as horrible as it was and will hopefully be fixed now that even the developers have admitted it's a huge issue) and that you know how to build a set of gear -- that's just like every other MMO -- and macro/Spellcast.

But you know what? That lack of any real "skill" in the game didn't stop FFXI from being pretty damned fantastic because outside of players I certainly didn't play it because of the combat system (most boring I've ever seen in an MMO): I played it because of the storylines and the allusions to past games' characters/names.

Honestly, you don't even have any real criticism: it just sounds like you're trying to sound like a negative Nidhogg just because you can.

The devs say that the music you hear when the game launches will be different from the video you just posted.

I hope so if only because the synths are pretty horrible even if the themes themselves are pretty good.

Really, as old as FFXI is the synths were clear and worked really well. What I've hear so far is awash in reverb and just generally sounds cluttered as **** and washed out.

I'm going to chalk that up to YouTube compression as well. Although the music in 1.0 wasn't memorable, it wasn't bad either. (Sound effects were another story. Eeesh. And that hasn't been improved much yet.)

FF has always been a leader in music, not just because of the composers, but also because they pushed the envelope of video game sound. From the opera of VI, to the lush orchestrations from FF Tactics (in which the sound engineer said ***** native PS1 sound, lets do it right - and then did it so very very right), to the MP3 songs used in later games, they've always pushed the envelope on what a game system was capable of doing.

____________________________

FFXI: Catwho on Bismarck: Retired December 2014

Thayos wrote:

I can't understand anyone who skips the cutscenes of a Final Fantasy game. That's like going to Texas and not getting barbecue.

I just don't want to lose the utility of party based progression to quest based easy mode, and if it isn't balanced correctly that's exactly what we will get.

So you mean unbalanced? If questing alone gets you anywhere close to the same rate of exp as grouping does, then most people are probably going to go that route.

ChaChaJaJa wrote:

Sky was also really fun if you could stomach the time-sink aspect and sh*tty drop rates. But I liked the content and, before everyone was merited out the ***, it was quite challenging. But people also complained about this.

I liked Sky too, but it was easy to see why people ******** When it was still somewhat new it was crowded and people didn't like fighting over NMs for triggers.

I honestly don't think it was challenging outside of Kirin though. The most challenging thing about Sky (assuming you had mages who could stun effectively and a decent tank) was actually getting to the trigger NMs. Oh, that and the Kirin room teleporter... {Impossible to Gauge}.

____________________________

Rinsui wrote:

Only hips + boobs all day and hips + boobs all over my icecream

HaibaneRenmei wrote:

30 bucks is almost free

cocodojo wrote:

Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.

That's not the case at all, the fact that in this alpha video it shows you step by step to get a quest done is boring to me. And to be honest it's okay I'm just one player but I have the right to give my opinion. I'm not here to complain I'm just disappointed because I have been waiting for 3 years. Like I said I'll still try the game.

We had a system for the teleporter, in which you'd run screaming down the hall without sneak on to form a train, launch yourself onto the platform, and land on (hopefully) the Kirin floor slightly bloodied and bruised.

Only worked half the time (naturally) but it was fun to do all the same.

____________________________

FFXI: Catwho on Bismarck: Retired December 2014

Thayos wrote:

I can't understand anyone who skips the cutscenes of a Final Fantasy game. That's like going to Texas and not getting barbecue.

everything looks easy and elementary to me. You know exactly where to go to get the quest done, combat is impressive with graphics but no real skill involved, I'm sorry I'm just stating my opinion. I will still try the game but I already know it won't stick. Because so far from what I have seen the game requires no thinking whatsoever everything is done for you. I never understood why people like casual so much. I don't have much time but I rather play something that requires skill. I guess my hopes for something like XI has died today.

you just described every AAA MMO released in the last ~5 years. i'm not saying you're necessarily wrong in your assessment (though you've certainly simplified things to a semi-ridiculous degree, based on very little evidence), but I think it's funny that you are surprised by any of this.

Furthermore, to say that ARR or any similar MMO "does not require skill" is simply incorrect. It may not be the level of skill you're looking for (i complain about this all the time), but come on with the blanket statements. I like to think we all are better than that in this forum.

Finally, if what you really want is XI, then by all means go re-sub; the servers are still up, the community is thriving, and if you're lucky you can hook up with one of those "Ye Olde Grinde Was Ye Beste" linkshells that recruit over in the other forums from time to time.

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this alpha video it shows you step by step to get a quest done is boring to me.

Its a proof-of-concept video. They're showing how the quest system works, and that it does work. And that its the same as every theme-park MMO ever. I'm not a fan of too much hand-holding either, but tbh, i'd prefer this over the vague XI quests that required wiki-ing everything. Something in the happy medium area would be of course ideal, but that's just crazy talk.

We had a system for the teleporter, in which you'd run screaming down the hall without sneak on to form a train, launch yourself onto the platform, and land on (hopefully) the Kirin floor slightly bloodied and bruised.

Only worked half the time (naturally) but it was fun to do all the same.

That's not the case at all, the fact that in this alpha video it shows you step by step to get a quest done is boring to me. And to be honest it's okay I'm just one player but I have the right to give my opinion. I'm not here to complain I'm just disappointed because I have been waiting for 3 years. Like I said I'll still try the game.

It's fine to have your opinion. But the thing is this just isn't new. Levequests in FFXIV 1.0 had an almost identical style of how to do them, from the scaling of difficulty and being able to change it depending on your level and party size, to highlighting where the enemies are on your map so you know where to find them. The only difference between 1.0 and 2.0 is that 2.0 allows you to start the levequest from anywhere in the zone that it takes place, instead of via an Aetheryte Crystal in the middle of a camp.

Let me ask, do you use FFXI Wikia? Or maybe even the ZAM Wiki at all? Do you use it for quests? Maybe you were stumped on how to get the map for Ranguemont Pass. Or perhaps you had no clue which NPC you had to approach to progress a quest in Wings of the Goddess? The thing is, in the end, unless you are the most hardcore of gamers to have ever gamed the games, you have surely turned to some form of guide or walkthrough to help you get through something in FFXI. It would be next to impossible to have completed a lot of those quests without doing so, or having to spend days upon days meandering the whole of Vana'diel trying to figure out what you need, or who to talk to.

I am bringing all this up because what's the difference between turning to a Wiki for a walkthrough, and seeing a highlighted point where you need to go to next? In essence it's ultimately the same thing, except one is done through a collection of fans archiving game information, and the other is done by the developers to keep you on track.

Anyway, that's all I got on the matter. Do I wish that sometimes quests had a bit more thought put in to them? Maybe a bit more vagueness to force you to do some more footwork? Sure, why not? It would give you a better sense of accomplishment by successfully figuring out where to go, who to talk to, what to gather, et cetera, et cetera. But I'm not going to lose any sleep over it so long as the quests themselves are insightful in to the world, enjoyable to read, and occasionally are challenging either through some manner of mini-game, or a difficult fight.

I can't find it in me to be critical. Considering that Yoshi has said he envisions 2.0 to be an "amusement park," I hope to have plenty of other things to do so as to not focus on combat. The only person in this thread so far who has admitted to liking the video got rated down to oblivion. Things like that remind me why I've hardly ever posted here after being a member for almost seven years.